This is the 23rd post in the Articulate 101 series. It was written by Articulate Sales Operations Manager Sarah Schenone.

All Articulate authoring tools allow you to create highly customizable and flexible elearning content. So it’s difficult to explain every single way that the tools can be leveraged for your elearning needs. The following addresses some of the frequently asked questions regarding Quizmaker features and functionality, and offers some suggestions for taking your content and user experience to the next level.

Pooling & Randomization

In certain situations, delivering an identical quiz to all users is required. But what if you would prefer to offer a unique quiz with each attempt? Then we suggest leveraging the pooling and randomization features of Quizmaker.

With randomization enabled, you can vary the order in which the questions are presented to the student. Pooling allows you to provide users with a subset of questions from a larger question list (the “pool” of questions is sometimes referred to as a question bank). You may want to use a combination of both features to further customize the quiz content for each student and each attempt.

To enable pooling and/or randomization:

1. Click on Quiz Properties -> Quiz Info.

2. Scroll down to the Pooling and Randomization section.
3. Check the box to Randomize questions.
4. Select from the drop-down the number of questions you’d like to ask your users.
5. Click OK to save your changes.

Quiz Feedback

Another way to add a personal touch to your quizzes is to provide feedback to the user. You can do so as the student responds to each question and for the quiz performance as a whole.

Through Quiz Properties –> Question Feedback you can designate default feedback statements that apply across the quiz for correct and incorrect responses:

You can also specify unique correct/incorrect feedback by question. In the question editor, select “Question Level” from the Feedback type dropdown menu. Click the ellipsis button (…) to add the preferred statement for correct and incorrect responses for that particular question:

You can take the feedback one step further with multiple choice questions. This question type offers an additional option to provide specific feedback related to the answer selected. Select “Answer Level” from the Feedback type dropdown menu and designate the feedback based on the user’s response:

Note: In order to utilize the question- or answer-level feedback, you must have the quiz set to “Submit one question at a time” under Quiz Properties –> Quiz Settings. Also, any changes you make to the default Quiz Properties –> Question Feedback would only apply to questions you haven’t yet created. For the questions you have created, you would need to double-click the individual question and change the feedback there.

In addition to the feedback by question, you can offer feedback upon completion of the quiz, based on pass or fail results. Go to Quiz Properties –> Results–> Display pass/fail messages and add a note for each outcome:

Branching & Tracking

In our Articulate 101: Quiz Settings in Presenter entry, we discussed inserting an Articulate Quizmaker quiz in your Articulate Presenter e-learning course and how to form branching scenarios with the available behavior settings. We’re going to take this one step further to show you how branching can translate into a basic tracking mechanism.

One of the most common questions related to Quizmaker is: “How do I track my results.” My response back is: “Do you need to track specifics (i.e. score, question responses, latency, etc.), or merely completion of the quiz with pass or fail results?”

If the response is the former (tracking specifics), I relay the supported methods for reporting detailed Quizmaker results:

• Articulate Online

• SCORM or AICC with an LMS
• Email

If tracking simply means they want to know whether someone passed or failed the quiz, I recommend using the features already provided by Presenter and Quizmaker for confirmation. A combination of branching, hidden slides and restricted navigation will help you to know if a student has progressed as needed.

See Quiz Branching and Hidden Slides

So even after you’ve got your branching defined and your slides hidden, you still don’t want the user to see the post-quiz slide(s) without progressing through the quiz itself.

Set your Player Template Builder –> Navigation to “Restricted” or “Locked” so that users can’t jump around or advance past the quiz on their own. Then include a unique certificate or image on the hidden “passing” slide. You can follow Gabe’s blog entry for Web Object & PHP to Generate a Custom Certificate of Completion to do so.

In one of Tom’s entries for the Articulate 101 series — Bring the Web to Your E-Learning — he includes a great example of leveraging a Web Object in combination with a Flash cookie to provide a basic tracking mechanism.

For more on branching, see the following blog entries:

• Yes, Rapid E-Learning Can Do Branching

• The Secret to Building Decision-Making Branches Using PowerPoint
• These 3 Tips Can Change Your Compliance E-Learning Forever

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